Golisano College Graduates Working Together On the Cutting Edge of Situational Awareness Technologies For The MITRE Corporation

By Fran Broderick

Three graduates of the Golisano College software engineering program are now working together on advanced situational awareness systems that have been utilized at such high-profile, public events as the 2013 Presidential Inauguration and the 2012 MLB All-Star Game.

The alums, Patrick Day ‘11, Rob Gustafson ‘10, and Chris Hossenlopp ’12, are members of an eight-person team at The MITRE Corporation, a not-for-profit organization that operates federally funded research and development centers for the government, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Their research has been instrumental in helping law enforcement and security officials harness the latest technology and tools for improved situational awareness at large-scale events, such as the 2012 LA Marathon, the 84th Academy Awards, the 2012 Republican National Convention and the 2012 Democratic National Convention and the NATO 2012 Chicago Summit. Prototypes developed by the team can better pinpoint the location of first responders during a routine event or a crisis, document and quickly communicate incidents and create a faster, highly interoperable link between first responders and those in a command center who direct security operations.

John Kreger is chief systems engineer for the DHS-sponsored Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute, managed and operated by MITRE. Kreger explains that MITRE’s systems “use abstraction and data standards to improve information sharing and the accuracy of situational awareness.” Security and law enforcement officials have been utilizing these systems to bolster their efforts at events where the logistics can sometimes be mind-boggling.

Lead software systems engineer Donald McGarry first conceived of MITRE’s Command & Control Cloud in a Box (C3IB). According to MITRE’s website, “this project involved a plan for setting up a fully operational command post that could provide responders with full situational awareness and command and control capability within four hours of its deployment.”

The RIT alums have helped develop and deploy these systems and Day says, “We hope to expose the approach to more government sponsors and show them how they can implement it for everyday use.”

Day first joined MITRE as part of a co-op program and has remained with the organization since: “I began my co-op with MITRE in 2007 and never left. I spent four years in a co-op position for the Center for Information and Technology before taking a full-time position upon graduation.” Day helped recruit Hossenlopp to the team. Gustafson also joined MITRE first through the co-op program, and later worked on a MITRE-sponsored software engineering senior project. He joined MITRE full time after graduation in 2010.

RIT’s strong software engineering and computing security programs make graduates an attractive fit for MITRE projects, and MITRE looks forward to continuing its relationship with the University through co-op positions, research partnerships, and employment opportunities.